Though there is no evidence that Nott tried to render the Burgesses submissive to his will by bribing them with offices, the Assembly thought this a golden opportunity to weaken the Governor's appointive power. Some could recall Berkeley's Long Assembly, and all had been witnesses of the shameless way in which Nicholson had handed out jobs. So they passed a bill requiring each county court to nominate three men, all of them justices, from whom the Governor was to select one as sheriff, who was to serve not more than two years. Had not Nott been so anxious to avoid any conflict with the Assembly, he would certainly have vetoed this bill, for not only did it restrict his power of appointment, but it infringed upon the royal prerogative. But he balked when the House sent up a bill to require the Governor, in appointing the justices of the peace, to secure the assent of the Council, or at least five of them. He thought they were going too far in this attempt to deprive the Governor of the patronage, leave him at the mercy of the Council and Assembly, and make him a mere figurehead. When the Lords of Trade heard that he had vetoed this bill, they wrote congratulating him. "The restraining Governors from making justices ... is entrenching on prerogative, and you may be assured it will not be approved here. In all other plantations the power of appointing and removing justices of the peace is solely in the Governor.... But it would be prudence in the Governor to advise for his better information."[13] When the Assembly met again, in April, 1706, they made a daring attempt to weaken the Governor's power by passing a substitute law for the famous Act of 1680 which gave a perpetual revenue to the Crown. The new bill bore the disarming title of "An Act for raising a public revenue for the better support of the government ... and for ascertaining the salary of the Council." Nott apparently saw nothing alarming in it, but Colonel Quary at once suspected that it was intended to weaken the Act of 1680, and perhaps set a precedent which would eventually give the House control of the revenue from the export duty on tobacco. "These topping men" were merely waiting an opportunity to have the old law damned, he wrote the Lords of Trade. "Had the Assembly only designed to have augmented and added to the Queen's revenue, why could they not make an act of it without damning and destroying the former act? And that your Lordships may see the snake in the grass, please observe that the Assembly are pleased to appropriate the Queen's revenue as they think fit, a thing never pretended to before, and to limit and confine her Majesty from disposing of her own money.... Whereas in a former act the Queen was graciously pleased to appropriate L370 to be divided among the Council for attendance, in this act they have ordered otherwise ... by which they have tied up the Queen's hands from giving any part of her bounty but according to their pleasure."[14]